Oracle Backup and Recovery

Using RMAN
Mark Rank
DBA
UW-Platteville
 Intr odu ction
• Who am I?
– DBA and Manager of Development
for UW-Platteville
• Oracle experience
– Worked with Oracle for about 10 years
– Worked with RMAN for 2 years
– Using RMAN version 9.2 in production for
backup at UW-Platteville
 Ou tli ne
• Background
– General Backup and Recovery
– Overview of RMAN
• Backup using RMAN
– Configuration
– Reporting and monitoring
– Executing a backup
• Recovery using RMAN
• Cloning using RMAN
A little q uiz befo re w e star t
• Backing up Oracle data files using OS commands
while the database is open will give a valid
backup?
• Archiving the redo log files is done only for record
retention reasons?
• If you have a backup of the database you can
always recover the database?
• A database will have uncommitted transactions
after recovery?
 DB A M otto

Thou shall not loose data!

 Wh y d o we b acku p?
• Manage Risk
– How much risk can we afford to accept?
• Cost of backup systems
• Loss of customer confidence

– How much risk are we allowed to accept?

• Political Factors
• Cultural Factors
• Legal Factors
 Factors to Con si der
• Legislation or Organizational policies
• Time to backup
• Time to recover
• Redundancy of your system
• Criticality of the data
• Monitoring
• System availability during backup
 Some B est Prac tices
• Have a documented backup procedure
• Have a multilayer backup process if you can
• Have people trained with the recovery tools
• Monitor the backup processes regularly
• Correct issues with backup promptly
• Conduct Fire Drills of your backup processes
 Wh at is RM AN ?
• Stands for Recovery Manager
• Oracle’s recommended way of doing
physical backups
• Supports both online (hot) and offline (cold)
backups
• Does backup at the block level resulting in a
“fine grain” backup
 RMAN Repos itor y
• A database used by RMAN to store
configuration and record backup
information
• Optional on 9i or greater
• Still need to come up with a backup method
for the repository
• Not going to cover RMAN with the repository
in this presentation
 RMAN with ou t R epos itory
• With 9i or greater, can use the control file to
store the RMAN configuration and backup
data
• Will cause the control file to get larger
• May want to set the
CONTROL_FILE_RECORD_KEEP_TIME
 Execu tin g RM AN
• To invoke RMAN without a repository...

cmd> rman target=[conn_string]

 Viewin g Con figu ration
• To view the configuration
RMAN> show all;
• To set parameters
RMAN> configure [parameter syntax];

• See the reference manual for parameter

syntax
 Some ke y par ame ters
• RETENSION POLICY
• CONTROLFILE AUTOBACKUP
• CONTROLFILE AUTOBACKUP FORMAT
• CHANNEL 1 DEVICE TYPE DISK FORMAT
 A Not e Ab ou t DB ID’s
• When using RMAN without a repository,
need to inventory the DBID’s
• Needed for recovery without a control file
• Create a script that inventories them as part
of your back strategy

SQL> select dbid from v$database;

 Perfor min g an O nlin e
Backu p
• To backup the database without the archive logs
RMAN>backup database;

• To backup the database with the archive logs

RMAN> Backup database plus archivelog;

• Now for a demo…

 Increme ntal Backu p
• RMAN does block level incremental
backups
• Define levels of backup with level 0 being a
full backup
• A level 0 backup must always exist before
defining higher backups
• Also an option to do cumulative backups
 Increme ntal Backu p

Day Sun Mon Tues Wed Thur Fri Sun

Level 0 2 2 1 2 2 0
Incr emen ta l Backu p Syntax
• To execute an incremental backup
RMAN> backup incremental
level=[int] database plus
archivelog;
 Reten tion Po licy
• Recovery Window
– Latest possible date to recover database to
– Maintains information for a point-in-time
recovery anywhere in the window
• Backup Redundancy
– Maintains specified number of backups
including the most current
 Rep ortin g on the Catalog
• To get a summary of the backups
RMAN>list backupset summary;

• To get the details of a backup set

RMAN>list backupset [int];

• Now for a demo…

 Man agin g the Catalog
• Setting the retention policy
RMAN> configure retention policy
redundancy 2;
• Reporting obsolete
RMAN> report obsolete;
• Deleting obsolete
RMAN> delete obsolete;
 Recovery
• Read the book “Oracle9i RMAN Backup &
Recovery” or attend one of Oracle’s classes
• Recovery using RMAN is straightforward,
but it is also easy to trip yourself up

• “Practice, Practice, Practice”

Reco ver in g a Ta bles pac e

A Demo
 Usin g R MAN to Clon e
• An easy way to clone databases
• A good way to validate your backup
• A good way to practice recovery
 Outlin e of th e Pr oced ure
• Establish a target database and bring it up
to NOMOUNT
• Connect using RMAN to the source
database
• Force a checkpoint and log switch
• Duplicate the source to the target using the
DUPLICATE TARGET DATABASE command
 A not e abou t f iles
• Unless the file structures are the same you will
need to put db_file_name_convert and
log_file_name_convert commands in our INIT.ORA
file

• Unless all of your archive logs are in the RMAN

backup, you may have to do a manual recovery
because of file name issues
 A not e abo ut tim e
• If you want your clone to a be as of a point
in time, use the SET UNTIL TIME function

• You can use the TO_DATE function to

specify the date
 Wh at th at l ooks lik e
run {
set until time =
“to_date(‘20051012’,’yyyymmdd’)”;
duplicate target database to LSTA
pfile = \\rhea\apps\db\lsta\initlsta.ora;
}
 For more d et ail s
• See Chapter 16 of “Oracle9i RMAN Backup
& Recovery”
A Wor d ab out Compatib ili ty
• In general executable must match target
database
• See Appendix B of the RMAN Reference for
details.
 On e Par tin g Note
• Test your backups
– Fire drill regularly
– If possible use your backups as the source for
test databases

• Nothing worse than needing to recover and

finding out the tape is blank
 Summar y
• Background
– General Backup and Recovery
– Overview of RMAN
• Backup using RMAN
– Configuration
– Reporting and monitoring
– Executing a backup
• Recovery using RMAN
• Cloning using RMAN
 Bi bli ograp hy
• Where does this information come from?
– Oracle 9i RMAN Backup & Recovery
– Oracle 9i New Features Overview Class
– Oracle 8 Backup and Recovery Workshop
– My own experimentation
 Some R esou rc es
• Oracle9i RMAN Backup & Recovery
– By Freeman and Hart
– Published by Oracle Press

• Oracle Manuals
– Recovery Manager Quick Reference
– Recovery Manager Reference
– Recovery Manager User's Guide
 More Resou rces
• Oracle Training
– Enterprise DBA Part 1B: Backup and Recovery

• MetaLink Forum
– Oracle Server Backup and Recovery/RMAN
 Q& A

UW-Platteville Development
http://www.uwplatt.edu/oit/development

E-mail address
rank@uwplatt.edu